Best Madness album poll

So will The Liberty of Norton Folgate' replace Rise and Fall in the bands catalogue as the ultimate moody/downbeat Madness album ?

Quite possibly.

The team up with Rhoda Darkar is very special.

Yeah, much better than this old fanboy expected. Negatives: a bit relentlessly midtempo throughout; choruses mostly take easy way out (not unheard of in older days, but not as ubiq).

But arrangements & production is spot on, and damn how good the Barson piano feels to hear. And the unexpected Bollywood (?) break in the title track is hilarious and also promising; I believe these guys could do londonworldmusic decently.

Amusing myself with guessing songwriting credits (bought from emusic, so I've no physical copy). Anyone got the answers?

keep moving is a lot better than i ever remembered.

f*cking love the appearance of general public in victoria gardens which i have now realised is the lost madness gem

You know, I have a couple of Madness albums here I acquired quite cheaply a few years ago, and it's occurred to me that I haven't given any of them a real deep listen yet. Must rectify that.

i totally agree re the result of this poll : R&F is by far the best Madness album.
however .. the cover.
it is somewhat troublesome.

I keep flipping between R&F and Keep Moving.

I assume you refer to the brownface in particular, mark? That indeed looks quite off now, even (or especially?) considering that all the figures are intended as stereotypes of sorts. The corresponding song is also a bit, uh, "hey I went to India and I hated it".

They're back with a so-so live record. But after a quick listen -- Norton Folgate is still incredible (and underappreciated?).

The succeding albums are okay, but "Never Knew Her Name" is an incredible lost track

I need to check out Rise and Fall. I've got the Complete and Utter compilations and they're excellent collections, but I would like to give their albums another chance.

How Can I Tell You and Powder Blue off Oui Oui are both fantastic songs as well. They're on the studio working on a new album right now. Norton Folgate is a stupidly brilliant record - vinyl reissue on the horizon.

IMHO Rise & Fall and Keep Moving are their best albums (maybe Norton Folgate is their equal too).

But you can't fuck with any of the first run tbh